


Don't Let it Pass

by clover_magus



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Is Trying His Best, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst, Character Study, Existentialism, Fluff, Friendship, I don't know anything about developing photos, I take some artistic liberties with the true history of Owen Glendower for the sake of continuity, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Like Adam Parrish I have also never left the country, M/M, Magazine Editor! Richard Gansey III, Past Child Abuse, Photo Developer! Adam Parrish, Photographer! Ronan Lynch, Photography, Pynch Travels the British Isles for the Dramatics and Fall in Love, Reporter/Photographer! Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III is a Good Friend, Road Trips, Robert Parrish Is His Own Warning, Robert Parrish's A+ Parenting, Romance, Ronan Lynch Being an Asshole, Sort Of, Surrealism, Travel, blue sargent is a good friend, inspired by the Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25329601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clover_magus/pseuds/clover_magus
Summary: The weeks turned to months and the months suddenly became two years and Adam never left. On the wall in his office are some photos through the years—a snowy mountain top or two, a hitchhiker with a hand-rolled cigarette between his ringed fingers, a woman smiling with sharks swimming at her waist, the intricately tattooed back of a man holding a camera. That last one is his favorite. The man has his head turned, not to face the camera, but to see the photographer.There are days when Adam can imagine, just for a moment, that it is him behind that camera. That he is experiencing the extremities of life alongside that man. He can almost taste the clean air, smell the campfire just outside of frame, feel the dirt beneath his fingernails.This isn’t what Adam had planned. But he’s comfortable. He doesn’t know how to leave.*Adam Parrish is a photo developer for the Cabeswater travel magazine, and it isn't the life he planned. Suddenly tasked with locating the elusive photographer Ronan Lynch on his personal quest to find a lost king, Adam embarks on a journey that forces him to contend with what it means to feel alive.
Relationships: Adam Parrish & Blue Sargent, Richard Gansey III & Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43





	1. In the Deepest Depths I Lost Myself, I See Myself Through Someone Else

**Author's Note:**

> Story Title - "Don't Let It Pass" by Junip  
> Chapter Title - "Black Water" by Of Monsters and Men

When Adam received his Harvard acceptance letter, he remembers thinking, _This is it. I’m finally free_.

Since then, he thinks he has accomplished a lot. He got dual degrees in classics and psychology, graduated early, then went to law school at Columbia and graduated _summa cum laude_. He became a family lawyer, did a lot of pro-bono stuff to benefit abused and disadvantaged kids. He wasn’t making as much money as he always dreamed, but he was helping people like himself and that was all that mattered in the end, really. He checked his mail one grey morning and found an invitation to the funeral and memorial of one Robert Parrish, loving husband and father, and it was all downhill from there.

Now, Adam develops photos. He never imagined that his obligatory minor in photography would have done him any good in the long run, but it turned out to be enough for Gansey. After losing his job (budget cuts), several botched therapy sessions (Gansey’s idea), and getting his water shut off, Adam finally gave in to the inevitable urge to be taken care of. He spends every day in a dark room, working as a lousy photo developer for a travel magazine that his ex-girlfriend’s fiance owns.

“ _It couldn’t hurt, Adam_ ,” Blue had said, when she heard about his financial affairs. “ _Just until you’re back on your feet_.”

The weeks turned to months and the months suddenly became two years and Adam never left. On the wall in his office are some photos through the years—a snowy mountain top or two, a hitchhiker with a hand-rolled cigarette between his ringed fingers, a woman smiling with sharks swimming at her waist, the intricately tattooed back of a man holding a camera. That last one is his favorite. The man has his head turned, not to face the camera, but to see the photographer. He had the eyes of someone who has seen everything, experienced everything, climbed to the highest mountain peak and embraced the wisdom given to him. Wonderful, inexplicable wisdom. Beautiful without even trying.

There are days when Adam can imagine, just for a moment, that it is him behind that camera. That he is experiencing the extremities of life alongside that man. He can almost taste the clean air, smell the campfire just outside of frame, feel the dirt beneath his fingernails.  
This isn’t what Adam had planned. But he’s comfortable. He doesn’t know how to leave.

Adam meets Blue in the elevator. She smiles at him and Adam thinks, for the thousandth time, that he wishes he was good enough for her. Maybe if Gansey wasn’t so perfect or if Adam wasn’t so damaged, Blue would have chosen Adam. They would have a giant Saint Bernard which Blue always wanted and Adam always detested, traveling and writing articles on the obscurities of the world together. In high school, Adam had once thought he would marry Blue. It’s stupid to think about now, they were so young, but he thought he could make it work. It was Adam’s ambition that ruined them, in the end. He was too self-involved, too obsessed with making it out of Henrietta, Virginia, out of Antietam Lane. He was too ignorant back then, no matter how smart he thought he was.  
Adam couldn’t understand why Blue wouldn’t marry him. He pushed too hard when he shouldn’t have. Blue had never minced her words and she let him know exactly how in the wrong he was.

Now Blue has her stupidly big Saint Bernard and travels the globe taking photos of the world’s hidden treasures all on her own. She doesn’t need any man or woman to give her life meaning, but Gansey’s there to boot anyway.  
He hates that he still feels that way sometimes, like a bitter divorcee, as if their issues had not been entirely Adam’s fault. She’s happy though and, per usual, that’s all that matters.

“Morning, Adam,” she grins and slaps the latest magazine issue to his chest. He fumbles with it for a moment and looks at the cover. It is colored this time, a nice change from the usual black-and-white stuff Gansey is so fond of. There’s a bird on it. Some colorful, beautiful blue bird with eyes as dark as Blue’s. He grins.

“This yours?” He asks. Blue grins.

“Mhmm! Last male blue macaw in the wild, as far as we know. Spent weeks looking for it,” Blue says dreamily. “The photo doesn’t do them justice, Adam, they’re beautiful.”

Adam lets out a breath. Blue seems more in love with the photo than with Gansey. Gansey would happily agree. “Jeez, did you shower?”

“I showered when I got back.”

“That’s so gross.” Blue sticks her tongue out at him. It’s tiny, like a cat’s, and tinted blue. Adam briefly wonders if she had blueberry yogurt this morning. Or a lollipop. Or maybe she isn’t human but, in fact, an otherworldly creature where everything is as blue as her name and everyone is beautiful and independent and prone to sending Adam into cardiac arrest. Maybe Adam needs to get out more. Maybe he read too many fantasy novels in college. He never used to daydream like this. He doesn’t know when it started.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open rigidly. They step out together to meet Gansey in the hallway, where he is gazing proudly at the enlarged version of the magazine’s cover. It is hung on the creamy walls in an endless line of monthly covers just like it, with the pale logo sitting soundly on the bottom of the page in letters like Grecian columns reading Cabeswater.

Adam thought it was a stupid name. How do you get to Cabeswater Magazine? It doesn’t have any particular connotation like Cosmopolitan or Time Magazine. But the magazine was doing well enough. Turns out, people would rather read beautiful stories more than news, and the travel buffs of the world relied on Cabeswater Magazine for airplane reading. It still sounds sort of stupid.

Gansey turns around and smiles brightly at him and Blue. His teeth are shockingly white, his jaw strong and handsome, his suit clean and navy Blue with a shiny baby Blue tie and a yellow pocket square with Blue polka-dots. Blue Blue Blue. Gansey looks like an ocean shore. He looks good in Blue. Adam looks like the endless sprawl of midwestern grain, where Blue skies overwhelm and sicken the stomach if one looks for too long. He does not look nearly as good in Blue.

“Congratulations on the cover photo,” Gansey says to Blue. He noses her hair when she comes his way. “Adam, just the man I wanted to see. Could I see you in my office?”

Adam lets himself worry for a moment, maybe even hope. Hope that he will be fired-or worse- whatever that could be. Gansey flashes that winning smile again.

“I have a project for you, if you’ll take it.”

Gansey’s office is an empty space of four walls. Books cover one wall. Colorful pictures of oceans, mountains, and mysteries cover another. The longest wall is hardly a wall at all, but a stretch of floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city. The last wall is empty, featuring only the door that Gansey leads Adam through.

Adam always feels a little out of place at Cabeswater. He’s an outsider among the successful reporters and the refurbished tiles and white-washed walls. It’s like the Ivy League all over again, a destitute country boy sitting among the privileged. An ambitious mouse in the lions’ den. Gansey’s office is like that too, but in a different way. Gansey’s desk is a mess of books and papers, covered in framed photos of him and Blue, their stupid dog, their friends. Even Adam’s face is on his desk in a photo with Blue and Gansey at their engagement party two years ago, where Adam had gotten his job. In it, he is frowning.

Gansey walks around his desk, but doesn’t sit down. He leans against his desk casually, crossing his legs, and gestures for Adam to sit in Gansey’s presidential chair. He obeys.

“Have you ever been to Iceland, Adam?” Gansey asks.

Adam shakes his head. “I’ve never even been out of the country.”

“You work for a travel magazine,” Gansey says incredulously. Adam doesn’t dignify his surprise with a response. “I have a proposition for you. You don’t have to take it, but I really don’t trust anyone else with this.”

Adam furrows his brow, curious. Gansey picks up a small stack of photos and plops them in front of Adam gracelessly. Adam picks them up to card through them.

“These were taken by a friend of mine,” Gansey says. “All from Iceland three months ago.”

Adam recognizes the photos. These are ones that he developed. They require a different solution. These are the black and white photos Gansey favors. There is one of a hand with a ring on the finger; large, jagged rocks over foggy waters resemble a mermaid; light shining through ice like glass; a volcano covered in snow. They are some of Adam’s favorites. The ones he hangs on his office wall.

“We had been talking about something we used to joke about back in high school,” Gansey recounts. “I was pretty whimsical, and he humored me. We would spend our parents' money combing rural Virginia for signs of an ancient king we were never quite sure existed. It was silly, but we cared about it. Then one night not too long ago, Ronan asked what I would do if he ever actually found the guy’s grave. I told him I would decide when he found it. And because he is Ronan and will always be Ronan, he left two weeks later.”

Adam watches Gansey for signs of distress, but Gansey just sets another stack of photos on the table. Then another and another. Dutch letters on a white wooden sign; the words _carissime inibi_ decaying in dim catacombs; a raven on the handle of a motorcycle; a moldering gravestone incised with the letters N, C, and Z; ancient ruins somewhere at sunset.

“I don’t know where any of these are,” Gansey sighs. “Somewhere in Europe, assumably. He’s likely bouncing around all the Anglo-Saxon territories like a crazed amateur historian.”

He says it offhandedly, as if this is the sort of thing his friend does on the daily. Runs to far-off lands in search of nonexistent kings for months on end, leaving no trace, not so much as a goodbye.

“Is your friend insane?” Adam asks. Gansey chuckles.

“Sometimes I wonder, but no. He just does what he wants, lives how he wants to live, doesn’t let anything hinder him. I mean, he’s got the money to. Once he gets an idea in his head, he makes it a reality. He’s the only person I know who can make dreams come to life,” Gansey rambles wistfully. He waits a beat. “I want you to find him.”

Adam’s eyes widen almost comically. “What?”

“I want you to find him.” Gansey says each word individually, stacking them on top of each other like bricks. “Don’t bring him home, I’m not that dumb. I haven’t heard from him in months. All I get are these photos. I just want to know he’s okay and I want someone to make sure he doesn’t kill himself by trying to hike Mount Everest again. And, at the end of it all, I want you to give me 4,000 words on your journey and choose the best photo Ronan took for the cover of the next print issue.”

Adam is speechless.

“Take those with you,” Gansey gestures to the photos, “And think about it. Let me know by Wednesday so I can put you on a plane to Iceland by Saturday.”

Adam wonders if this is one of his day dreams again, but even he couldn't imagine something like this. “What did you say his name was?”

Gansey smiles and slides over one last photograph. It’s a photo of a man with a buzzed head in a tank top, holding an old camera almost romantically, like he is trying to show the camera the world it could be seeing. He looks like a modern day byronic hero with a handsome Roman nose and facial features that cut like ice. A tattoo curls around the junction between his neck and shoulders. Adam knows that face, he realizes, because he stares at the side of it every evening at his desk and wishes it were him.

“Ronan,” Gansey says, pulling Adam from his stupor. “Ronan Lynch.”


	2. Time To Step Outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not the sort of thing Adam is equipped to do. This is not the sort of thing Adam does. Wanderlust is not something Adam is prone to experiencing. Adam was sensible, circumspect, straight-edged, a clean-shaven hodgepodge of westernized idealistic ambition.
> 
> Isn’t he?
> 
> *Adam daydreams and grapples with the concept of recklessness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: "Step Out" - Jose Gonzalez

Adam’s apartment is grey.

Not grey like storm clouds or the silver hue that became trendy for hair styles. The kind of grey that was the cheapest option the landlords could pass off as classy enough for those whose dreams drifted just too far out of their reach. Adam felt like he was at a doctor’s office in his own home, staring anxiously at a blank wall besides a menacing diagram of an ear canal and a warning against measles, while he waits for moderately bad news he can use as an excuse to get out of work for the next three days. He knows the feeling.

It’s a studio, which is horribly cliche. It doesn’t even have a loft for the bedroom like any self-respecting ex-pro-bono, ivy educated lawyer should have during their early to mid-life crisis. Most of his furniture is assembled from plastic crates stolen from the backs of grocery stores. His two kitchen counters are grey, with dull green speckles on the counter tops, like the cheap cupboards in public high schools. There is one thin, wall-to-wall window, not to be confused with the beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows in Gansey’s office, that overlooks a city of more grey buildings billowing with grey smoke beneath a sky so clear and blue it seems photoshopped.

It’s almost like Adam can reach forward and rip away the chimney smoke, as if it were construction paper glued to a silky backdrop on a movie set. He imagines opening the window. Sees himself tearing the paper. Below him, imitative clay dolls look towards the scene in a stop-motion scene, raising their mittened hands to watch Adam crawl through his window and fly out, lighter than air, floating towards the sky on a big red balloon. He punches a hand through the blue and it rips and behind it, the endless expanse of the universe; trillions of stars of shining colors he can hardly comprehend, space dust clouding in majestic masses, swirling planets swimming in pools of technicolor. If he can just pull himself through the hole in space-time he has made, he will find himself in zero gravity. What an experience that will be, to die weightless among the most beautiful stars he could possibly imagine. Just a little further—

A noise two floors down startles Adam back to reality. A scuffle between a homeless man and a cat that results in a trash can lid clattering to the asphalt and rolling into the brick wall of the alleyway. The cat was yellow, like mustard seed.

Adam looks at the file of photos Gansey gave him.

Adam is not an idiot. He knows there is no reason for Gansey to send Adam traipsing after his friend. Not when there is perfectly good evidence that he’s fine, even if he won’t answer his cell phone like a neolithic apologist. This also, frankly, isn’t in Adam’s job description. There are some labor laws Gansey is _surely_ circumventing just to send Adam on a trip. Adam is tempted to brush up on his labor law knowledge just to prove it. He knows he’s got the books on his shelf. Is that what this is? Is this just a ploy to get Adam out of his hair? Is the pay bonus just to help him get on his feet? Adam may have gotten better at accepting help over the past decade, but he still refuses to be a charity case.

The one thing Adam can trust, has learned to trust, is the content of Gansey’s character. When they first met, Adam thought he was just another charity case for a guilty rich boy. In a way, that was true. Gansey found friends and fell in love with every one of them. It pained him to see them hurt, so he did everything in his power to make his friends happy. If that sometimes meant he tried to fix them, he didn’t know any better. He’s learned, though. He’s grown. So has Adam. Gansey would never do that to him. That’s the one thing about this insane situation that he can count on.

This is not the sort of thing Adam is equipped to do. This is not the sort of thing Adam does. Wanderlust is not something Adam is prone to experiencing. Adam was sensible, circumspect, straight-edged, a clean-shaven hodgepodge of westernized idealistic ambition.

Isn’t he?

Adam feels a tightening in his chest. Ropes around his lungs. He calls Blue.

“Adam?” She answers. She is somewhere crowded. He can hear the muffled sounds of clinking glasses, sophisticated piano, and the aimless chatter of politicians. One of Gansey’s parties.

He thinks about introducing his question, trying to defend himself, but he throws that idea out the window because it’s Blue and she will tell him like it is. He says, “Was I ever reckless?”

She thinks about it for a moment, takes a sip of something, and then says, “Yes, I think so. Sometimes you go so long being so wound tight that all your energy and emotions get bottled up and then explode. It’s around that time you do something either incredibly cool or incredibly stupid, sometimes incredibly mean.”

“Like when?”

Blue hums. He hears her munch on something. It makes him think of cucumbers and he realizes that he doesn’t remember the last time he had a vegetable. “Remember winter break during our sophomore year of high school? You always had mixed feelings about breaks. That last day of school, you were so elated to have a minute to not think about school, but so anxious about having to work more and what you were going to do without excuses to keep you out of the house. That last day, you didn’t have work, but you didn’t want to go home, so you rode your bike to my house in the rain and said you wanted to go swimming in the river?”

Adam doesn’t remember.

“Yeah, that’s probably because you got pneumonia from swimming in said river after I told you it was a stupid idea.”

Adam does remember that. It was one of the worst three weeks of his life and the sickness had nothing to do with it. Robert Parrish had accused him of faking it until he ended up in the hospital. He missed three weeks of work and almost couldn’t afford Aglionby School’s tuition for junior year. Robert didn’t speak to Adam for another two weeks, which was just as well, because Adam was rarely at the trailer after that. He left home the summer of junior year. Then he left for college, and left for law school, then left for work, and he didn’t return to Henrietta, Virginia until he watched his father’s body enter the ground.

So many of Adam’s problems stake their roots in Robert Parrish. He wishes, desperately, that he could just let it all go.

“You’re sensible enough, Adam,” Blue says. “If you ask me, though, which you are, I think you could use a good swim in the rain.”

“I thought it was a bad idea.”

“There is a time for reckless behavior, Adam,” she says, cryptically. It reminds him of her aunt, Persephone, who helped Adam leave the trailer all those years ago. “You were always so afraid of losing what you had. What you earned. But what have you got to lose right now?”

Blue says it so simply that Adam feels like he’s at confession. It’s one of the things he loves and fears about her, how easily she can pick him apart and put him back together.

Adam wonders what other instances Blue remembers. Was it reckless to try to leave Henrietta? To leave the trailer park? Was his ambition sensible or reckless? It was supposed to be a means to a happier, more comfortable end, but he never got that far. Now that he thinks about it, he wonders if he could ever handle being comfortable after the life he lived. Maybe he always wanted to be reckless. Maybe he just wanted things on his terms.

Adam frowns. “Did Gansey tell you about our meeting?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Blue doesn’t try to hide the dishonesty in her tone, but it isn’t malicious, Adam thinks. Blue is all tough love and misdirection. She just wants him to see the world for once. He is beginning to agree with her.

It may be time to go swimming.

“Thanks, Blue.”

“Anytime,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Oh, and fair warning, Lynch isn’t an easy guy to get along with, but I think you’ll manage just fine _._ He’s kind of cute, like a baby alligator. Or an opossum.”

“Excuse me?”

Blue disconnects and Adam feels strung tight. He can feel the strings tied around his lungs, holding him to the ground. He remembers this feeling. He felt it in the trailer. He felt it in high school. He felt it in Henrietta.

He remembers the feeling of those strings snapping when Adam finally told his father, “You have no power over me anymore,” his best friends, Blue and Gansey, standing behind him. He remembers the tightening of the ropes when he opened his Harvard acceptance letter. He remembers the ricochet of those strings when they snapped again as Adam drove his beat up car outside the Henrietta city limits for the very first time. Every time he cuts them, those strings grow back like vines. It’s time to pick the weeds again.

Adam tugs at his sweater. He breathes and dials Gansey’s phone number. When the other man answers, he’s at the same party as Blue.

“Gansey, I hope you have money for travel gear, because I don’t own any. Considering this is a company project, I expect I can make use of the company budget,” Adam says.

He can hear Gansey’s grin over the phone. As his friend yells at Blue about Adam accepting the job and prattles on about logistics and itineraries, Adam feels those strings snapping again, and he relishes the sting that follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've never watched the Secret Life of Walter Mitty or listened to it's soundtrack, I highly suggest it. It has it's issues, but there's a specific kind of wisdom in that film about spontaneity and bravery that is exactly what I needed when I watched it the first time. In the same way, the Raven Cycle was exactly what I needed to read when I was that age. It's probably why I've hyper-fixated on it for so long.
> 
> I relate to Adam in an incredibly personal way. I don't know how much I will discuss Robert Parrish in this story, but I think it's important for me to mention this. If you are in a situation that is unhealthy for you, which you can't seem to leave from, you're not alone. If you feel like the situation you're in isn't dangerous enough for it to be a problem, there IS a problem. Many of us are still in quarantine, some could be trapped with their abusers, and I know there could be people reading this who need to see this. Even if it's just a small chance. Below is a short list of domestic abuse hotlines. Do whatever you need to do to protect yourself, so you can start living.
> 
> National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233, or text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-7233 if you are unable to speak safely  
> Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)  
> National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255  
> Trevor Helpline: 1-866-4-U-Trevor or 1-866-488-7386, or text the word "Trevor" to 1-202-304-1200  
> National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673  
> GLBT National Youth Talkline: 1-800-246-7743 and 1-888-843-4564  
> Master List of International Hotlines for Abuse, Depression, Suicide, Etc.: https://togetherweare-strong.tumblr.com/helpline
> 
> Stay safe, lovelies <3
> 
> \- C.M.


End file.
